


Of Gods and Ghosts

by inK_AddicTion



Series: Age of Rust [8]
Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Character Death, Child Death, Extreme Homophobia, F/F, F/M, Homophobia, M/M, Rape Mentions, Religious Fanaticism, Sexism, Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Whipping, ghosts making terrible decisions, man hating, petty revenge, will think of better summaries and stuff later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 12:43:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7533235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inK_AddicTion/pseuds/inK_AddicTion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Apollo the slave, Selena the goddess" - prompt on tumblr for ksclaw</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Gods and Ghosts

Apollo ran. His heart hammered in his chest and his breathing was ragged and rasping, jerking through the lump in his throat. There were tears on his cheeks, dashed away by the wind, and his blurred sight cast the world in strange, wavering shapes. The collar around his neck had been buckled too tightly - Koz had yanked it shut, embarrassment fumbling his hands, and it restricted his breathing. Apollo knew he’d have bruises later.

The ground was dry and hard, and each pounding footfall raised clouds of dust, his footprints pressed firmly into the dust. He was easy to track, even if they hadn’t brought out the hunting dogs, their baying behind him spurring on his flight. 

He wasn’t going to get away this time. Despair rose, and crushed him like a flattened fist. Why had he been so stupid? Why had he thought that he had been worth something - anything - to the young lord’s son, handsome, powerful Kozmotis, who had everything laid out for him on a silver platter, women wherever he went, a castle, friends, love, and  _ freedom? _

Apollo stumbled over a rock, crying out as the sharp edges sliced his bare feet. The heat from the run had kept him warm, but the frigid blasts of wind from down over the mountains hit him as soon as he stopped, and Apollo’s pale, bare body was buffeted in the wind, the remnant of the draped silks that had covered him flapping like ragged tails. 

He limped, winced, looked at the blood dripping onto the ground. He could hear the hooves of the horses behind him, now, thundering through the ground. The dogs barked, and he heard them crashing towards him, just over the sandy lip of the hill he’d taken refuge behind.

Apollo wheezed for breath, fingers plucking desperately at the too-tight collar. He couldn’t breathe, and pain jagged up his leg in steady, brilliant throbs. Adrenaline was turning his body to electricity, but he couldn’t run anymore - and even if he did, where was there to go? Under the hooves of the hunters? Deep into the sandy brush where nothing grew, injured and weak, useless? Somehow - back to the castle to grovel at Kozmotis’ feet, beg him for mercy?

A dark scowl twisted Apollo’s face. Not that. Never that. He’d die before he sank that low. 

Yet, as the hunters drew nearer and the sleek shapes of the dogs appeared over the hill, Apollo wept in terror. They would kill him, he knew, sacrifice him to the Goddess for being a filthy heretic, for corrupting perfect, beautiful Kozmotis, for tempting him into the worst sin there was. They would never accept that Kozmotis had gone willingly, or that it had been him that night, removing Apollo’s collar, pressing kisses over his throat, whispering secret, heady things, the way lovers did, and how when Apollo had pulled him closer Kozmotis had torn the fragile silks that covered him, his rough lips smiling against Apollo’s smooth skin.

_ “You tease,”  _ he’d murmured.  _ “You know you’ve been driving me insane all night.” _

Apollo gasped now with some desperate, bitter longing to be back in that moment, when everything was soft and fine and rosy with hope and love, in that darkened room, small and cramped and far out of the way so no one would stumble across them, in Kozmotis’ arms on the ratty little cot. Apollo had fancied them in love. He knew better now. Kozmotis had never thought anything more of him than a  _ toy  _ at best.

No - no, not love, that was the sinner in him talking. The Goddess taught that no man knew what such a principle as  _ love  _ was - they were creatures of base lust, that was all, and needed female guidance to stop them from falling to sin. 

He closed his eyes and offered a prayer to her now, as the dogs charged down the withered yellow grass slope and surrounded him, the pad of their tracks crisscrossing madly over the sandy hill, the divots of the horses’ hooves following after, the shouts of the riders and the barks of the dogs blurring into one loud angry bellow.

Half-crouched behind one dust-blasted rock, Apollo crouched in the shade of a withered tree and hugged his knees to his chest, despair and hopelessness overwhelming him. He couldn’t run. Where would he go? There was nowhere - and his bleeding foot made him even easier to track. He stuffed his knuckles in his mouth to hold back an aching sob.

He was scared. He was angry. He was, above all, hurt.

The jeers of the hunters hit him now like blows as they surrounded his hiding-spot, a dense wall of prancing, muscled flesh. The High Priestess had rode out with the rest, and now her ebony skin gleamed with sweat, and her eyes were hard and dark with rage. Her dark hair, bound back by a decorated leather thong, snapped in curls. The other hunters quieted as she spurred her horse forward, the poor creature’s head hanging low from exhaustion, froth curling at the mouth. 

“You disgusting filth,” she said, as she looked at Apollo crouching against the rock, “You couldn’t even take your punishment - you ran like a coward.”

Wordless, Apollo shrank against the rough rock and shivered. There was no man who did not rightly fear the High Priestess, if not for her cold, calculating mind then for the marks of scars around her wrists and throat - she had been a slave, once, before the Goddess’ mercy had freed her. She was ruthless in patrolling her Goddess’ rules in turn, and had executed people for the most minor of offenses.

The hunters sprang up again in mockery, and Apollo flattened himself, shaking, and tried not to listen as shame burned low in his stomach. He’d always been deviant, unable to quite keep to the Goddess’ rules. But now he had dragged Kozmotis into his depravity as well, and he deserved all the punishment for that. But Apollo was a weak creature, he always had been, and he feared pain, so he’d run from Kozmotis’ bedroom where they’d caught them, in each other’s arms in a shameful embrace. Kozmotis had chased him out, roaring condemnations - sinner, seductress, rapist, and Apollo had run and run as Kozmotis set the Priestess to hunt him down and kill him for his crimes.

_ I never did anything he didn’t want me to,  _ he wanted to scream.  _ He chased me. I would have stayed - serving in the kitchens, I could have stayed- _

He wept, and the High Priestess sneered. She took from her belt a long knotted whip, and snapped it between her hands. The other hunters quieted now, watching Apollo with something like horror, something like pity, and the odd sort of curiosity that people have watching animals be executed. 

“Up,” she ordered, “The Goddess believes in swift justice.”

“Please,” Apollo whimpered, “Please don’t- please!”

He didn’t know why he was begging. It wouldn’t stop her from killing him, it wouldn’t make his death swifter or less painful. It only meant more shame. Nevertheless, he couldn’t work his trembling legs into standing, and his head pounded with dizziness, eyesight blurring with his tears. He could barely breathe - each gulp of air rattled in his lungs like it knew it would be the last.

She hissed in frustration. Striding over to him, she towered imperiously over his crouched body, her dark eyes deep and flashing with disgust. The High Priestess gripped his hair and yanked him up, forcing Apollo to yelp and stumble to his feet. Barely had he stood when she kicked his shin and shoved his stomach, driving him against the rough bark of the tree. She set to work tying him to the tree, the knots rough and harsh. 

“Bring me meat,” she ordered, her eyes never leaving his face.

Apollo blanched in terror, and the hunters looked at one another for a moment, almost in trepidation. She meant to string him up and leave him to die in the heat of the remorseless sun, or failing that, leave fresh meat at his feet to attract scavengers that would eat him alive. One of their most gruesome punishments.

“H-Have mercy,” he whispered, and she struck him. The slap cracked loudly over the hillside, and Apollo’s head was lashed to one side from the force of it.

The High Priestess leaned in close, her painted lips near enough to brush his ear as she whispered venomously, “You corrupted the heir of the most powerful man for thousands of miles. You, a filthy, degenerate  _ slave,  _ forced man to lay with man. There is nothing the Goddess reviles more.” Her hand tightened in his hair, and she hissed, “He’s a good man. He will be again. He is  _ the father of my child.” _

Apollo stiffened. He hadn’t known that. The High Priestess was supposed to keep herself for the Goddess only. 

A vicious grin twisted his lips, and he whispered back, “You’re just as much of a depraved whore as I am,” he snarled, and she jerked as if she’d been shot. 

“I am  _ not,”  _ she hissed, and she brought the whip around hard. It cracked across his shoulder, and Apollo screamed as pain lit like a slash across his nerves. He shuddered and shook. 

She stepped back, looking cruelly satisfied, then nodded to herself when he cowered as she raised the whip again.

Fourteen times more she struck him, Apollo jerking and wriggling and screaming like a bound fish. The horses were stirring restlessly at each crack, but the hunters watched greedily, drinking in his pain like ambrosia. When she was finished, she turned on her heel, spat at his feet, and returned to her horse. With a final gesture, she ordered the hunters to follow her, and galloped off.

A great dust storm went up as the hunters followed, and Apollo was left, wilting in the heat and still whimpering a little. He’d never had any great stomach for pain, and whips held a special fear for him, ingrained right back to his first master, the man that had broken the quick-fingered thief he’d caught sneaking around in his ornate house and made into Apollo. The little thief-boy felt so far removed from Apollo now that he struggled to remember what he’d been like.

He didn’t even remember the name he’d been born with.

Apollo’d been sent away from the big cities as a gift. Serving as a clandestine pleasure-slave for the upper echelons of the cities, he'd been pressed down upon thousands of perfumed silk sheets, held the secret desires of hundreds of guilty lords unable to keep their greedy grabbing hands off something forbidden to them. Eventually, he’d been sold to a young lord important enough to have him sent away, whispering promises of love into his skin, when the affair was inevitably uncovered. He’d gone to Kozmotis’ service then, nothing more than a kitchen slave. But Kozmotis, like all the others, couldn’t keep both his hands and his eyes to himself.

It had been something different with him. Apollo had thought that - well, it didn’t matter what he had thought.

The sun glared down at him with incandescent fury. He was burning up, wanted to die from the heat. Sweat poured off his shaking body, and he knew that his pale skin was crisping in the heat. He was foreign to these blistering lands, and burned quicker than the locals did with their darker skin. The wind from the mountains cupping the dusty bowl of scrub was Apollo’s only saviour, brushing the sticky hair off his forehead and cooling the heat of the whip lashes. He thought maybe, humiliatingly, he cried. The stench of the meat in the sun left him unable to escape his situation, the burn of his muscles forced into their painful position was a torture of its own.

He was going to die. 

He was going to die and there was nothing he could do, and he was going to die because Kozmotis couldn’t admit that he’d fucked a male slave and enjoyed it, because the Goddess said that men laying with men was ugly and wrong, but there had been nothing ugly about the way Kozmotis had cried out in Apollo’s ear, or the way his strong hands had felt over Apollo’s body, or the way they lay there entwined in the aftermath, pale and rippling gold, murmuring secret things to each other. 

He was going to die because the High Priestess’ word was taken more highly than his was, even though she was a sinner as filthy as he was. It was forbidden for a priestess to break her chastity. Most people looked the other way if a noble fucked a male slave, so long as it was kept quiet and hidden and not screamed over the keep. Most people burnt unfaithful priestesses alive.

It was too hot. The heat would kill him before any scavengers could so much as track the meat at his feet. It felt like Apollo was burning alive.

_ Fire. Fire. _

It pounded behind his heartbeat in shimmering waves. He closed his eyes and hung limply, head lolling on his neck. His throat felt parched. He tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry. The dry heat licked everywhere, crackling up in his bones. Fire. Fire. Too hot. 

_ “A sinful priestess must be burnt alive.” _

The wind was speaking to him. It whispered secrets. He could see the High Priestess’ ebony skin gleaming with sweat. He could hear her gasps. Her night dark hair splayed over silken pillows Apollo recognised all too well.

_ “Well, well, it’s almost impressive that he’ll be the end of both of you. Surely one man’s cock can’t be that alluring to make  _ two of you  _ forget Me?” _

She’d sell the child. Pretend it was an orphan. Take it in, make it a priestess.

_ “A girl with her father’s cheeks, her mother’s liquid eyes, the wind on her lips and storms in her eyes. No, my fiery candle, they’ll leave her for the wolves.” _

Apollo thought maybe he was delirious. When he cracked open his eyes all he could see was dust dry shimmers of fire, moving lazily like a great turgid snake over the windblasted plains. The moon overshadowed the sun. White light. Hot. Burning. Fire. Fire.

The moon was up, and Apollo could see a predator slinking over the plains. Not any one that he recognised. Tall, shimmering. Paved in white light like diamonds, like light reflecting off the oceans. Frothing white horses in her wake.

_ Her. _

_ “Wake, candle. There’ll be time to spit and sputter later. Come now. See me.” _

He shook his head. Something wrong with his eyes, surely. He could barely breathe past the heat. Blistering. Boiling.

_ Sinners are burnt alive. _

Apollo was fairly certain that his blood was bubbling in his veins. He choked for breath that wouldn’t come. There was silvery light shining under the cracks of his eyelids, but his eyes were open wide.

_ “Sweet little flame, I offer you vengeance. Open your heart to me. Aren’t you angry? Don’t you want him on his knees?” _

His heart jerked and thudded. Black spots chased each other over his vision. He was staring fixedly up at a bright blue sky, seeing after images of silver flash everywhere. Fire from the whip, raking nails down his chest. He could smell searing flesh. His. He was going to burn alive.

Panic overcame him. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die.

_ He wanted to burn. _

A soft little chuckle in his ear, and then his ropes abruptly snapped and Apollo fell to his knees. He knelt there, panting and shaking, trembling with terror and awe. He didn’t dare look up. Silver. Silver. Water cascading off her body like a shield. Droplets spattering the ground. Bare feet, white white white like his own. And she spoke, crushingly, and Apollo felt something in his soul break.

“I want a child,” said the Pale Goddess.

The light struck her like a lover, turning her silvery hair to a ripple of molten metal. Her pale skin was flawless and shining, like a soft diamond, and the robes she wore scintillated with a thousand spinning fractals of jewels - bits of seaglass, polished pearls, rusted coins that tinkled together like windchimes, sharp and glittering treasures prized from the watery claws of sailors’ graves. 

He stared in awe at her soft cheeks and rounded face - plump and flushed with health - for Apollo was a slave who lived off of table scraps and his master’s mercurial kindness, and in a harsh arid land like this, the pale-skinned foreigners were the first to die in the heat without adequate protection, and so the fastest to be starved out by their fellow slaves. He was a ragged skeleton of bones and bruises himself, though certainly better off than if he hadn’t been the lord of the manor’s personal fuck-animal.

Her implacable eyes were cold and deep and immeasurable, but she looked human enough, even a little ugly with her widely spaced eyes and thinnish lips, certainly nothing godly unless he looked at her bright skin. And it was bright, bright like moons and suns, and her eyes blistered in their sockets like supernovae. Her hair was ablaze with a halo of fire, but her dress of moonsilk and shimmering fabrics too perfect to have been made by human hands was plastered to her body with saltwater, and she dripped wherever she walked. The smell of the sea and the distant crash of waves followed in her wake - the Pale Goddess’ domain was the moon, and the oceans were the moon’s servants.

Apollo choked on his own breath of air. Instantly, he pressed his forehead as far down against the dust as he could manage, trembling all over in renewed terror. He was dead, he must have died and now she was coming to punish him. Her words were still echoing around the blasted silence. His tongue was swollen and dry with thirst, and it was a terrible torture to kneel at her feet and feel the saltwater dripping off her skin, and knowing that he could not drink a drop. Not that the Goddess would grant such a mercy to a sinner like Apollo.

She sighed like an ocean breeze, and whitecaps ruffled in his mind. “You are delirious. I had hoped that for once a godless rat like you might be able to look at me without having to go through the religious experience ordeal first.”

Apollo blinked. He said nothing, but confusion as well as a hint of snappishness joined his fear. What else did she expect, appearing in a blaze of light in front of a heretic about to die? It was far easier to deny the existence of gods when one was not about to possibly go and meet them.

“That’s a fair point,” the Goddess mused, and Apollo’s bowels all but liquefied in horror. She could read his thoughts?! He managed to restrain himself from a truly embarrassing reaction - though with a fair amount of difficulty. 

“It would not be the first time that someone with a guilty conscience soiled themselves in my presence,” the Goddess sighed dryly, in a way that Apollo thought was maybe trying to be comforting, “It’s something about the threat of eternal imprisonment in the Shadow.”

_ The Shadow _ . He repressed a shudder. Kozmotis had loved talking about the Shadow, the nameless, thirsty darkness that was held back by the grace of the Pale Goddess alone, a lightless hell that devoured sinners and transformed their ghosts into soulless, plagued Nightmare Men. Kozmotis had been obsessed with it - he had charms and wards made by charlatans carved in every piece of furniture he owned, and refused to allow the torches to be put out even in the middle of summer when the corridors of the castle were brightly lit by the sun.  _ The flames defeat the Shadow, _ he would say,  _ fire is the Goddess’ instrument of light. _

Would Apollo be torn out inside, his flesh gnawed away by darkness itself, his tortured soul ripped through with holes until the shadows in it gaped wider than what light had ever lived there? A hollow, mindless Nightmare Man, drifting emptily over the planes on still dark moonless nights, lipless mouth screaming silently.

“Not yet, little candle,” the Pale Goddess said. “I want a child. And you will be my fire to cauterise the wound and cleanse this place of impurity. It has taken hold like maggots, but I cannot root it out alone. A creature like you - how did you put it? His  _ fuck-animal? _ \- will find it easier than I ever could.” She made a surprisingly ungodly snort. “Whenever they see me, they weep and beg for mercy and then we must go through their personal belief struggles. All my followers hate me, little candle, for the rules I give them. But they love you, cannot apparently  _ stop _ loving you. If such acts can be called  _ love.” _

Apollo kept quiet, but he thought again of Kozmotis’ strength, turned tender in those quiet, stolen nights, of how he could have broken every bone in Apollo’s body with ease but hadn’t ever raised a single bruise, how his eyes would glow golden warm like honey when they were together, deep and hot like molten gold, and how his sleep-roughened voice murmured Apollo’s name like a prayer. It had been love. To Apollo, it had been love.

“I don’t understand you,” the Pale Goddess said after a moment. “You are angry - but you still claim all of these far flung feelings far above what you were to every one of those men. You are a slave - it is not like you had a  _ choice  _ in sinning. It’s disgusting.”

He breathed a shaky laugh. “It wasn’t always disgusting. They were freeing themselves when they were with me,” he said quietly, “If you force a man to live a lie, it is so much easier to fall in love with his truth.”

She shook her head, and then said, “You are tired and over-hot. Come with me, candle - I will show you the crushing depths where the Shadow lies, and the towers of dust where light reigns.”

The Pale Goddess extended one pale hand, and quivering with a mixture of awe and fear - though tempered, since she hadn’t struck him down yet, and Apollo thought maybe that she planned to keep him - Apollo took it, and the oceans closed over his head and white light seared the sight from his eyes.

Left behind on the plains, a limp boy tied to a tree jerked once and then fell still. Presently, a fly landed on one of his unseeing eyes, blank and staring up at the sky.

The pounding of a horse’s hooves shattered the silence, and barely had the first curious coyote come sniffing than man’s yell scattered them, and a jet black horse raced down over the sandy lip of the hill, criss-crossed with the hunters’ tracks. The rider reigned in the horse as they approached the tree, and shouted a name - but the boy in the collar did not react.

The rider dismounted, and desperation edged his voice as he tried again, and then again. He went still and the realisation must have hit him then, because when he next spoke, it was cracked with guilt, and all he said was “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

The rider, weeping, reached up and with the gentlest movements, unlocked the collar from the slave boy’s neck, and then he threw it hard against the dirt, so hard that it scuffed a wide track where it landed. Then he went back to his horse, and pulled a shovel out of one of the saddlebags.

In silence, Kozmotis started to dig.

* * *

She watched him grow and thought about the moon being outshone by the brightness of the sun. This growing was not upwards or outwards or inwards like it had been when he was flesh, no, this was a candle slowly blossoming into an inferno.

The Pale Goddess’ home was beside a deep dark pool on the dark side of the moon, where everything was icy and jagged and white light shone in the cracks of the icicles hanging down like teeth from dusty rock. It had been a crater once, but years of the dripping Goddess making her home here had filled the crater with water that never stopped moving long enough for it to freeze over, even in the glacial chill of a rock without an atmosphere. 

Well, cold until Apollo waded deep within it, and then steam sizzled from his fiery skin and thick plumes of steam wove through the Goddess’ forest of icicles and made them weep. Like smoke, they wrapped around everything and made a constant, unearthly mist that only ever intensified when they were in each other’s presence, which was not often. 

The Goddess drifted like a ghost through her holdings, her snow-white hair blazing like a star, her waters freezing on her skin. She rarely spoke and when she did, it was an undertone, as if every word cost her effort. Every movement was considered with the utmost grace - the silent patience of an immortal who had lived for too long. She knew this blasted rock, her prison, better than any other.

Apollo did not. Like every young thing, he was overspilling with curiosity and spent hours chasing like a bright and fickle flame through the deathly forests of ice. He sang himself songs half-remembered from his thieving days, overheard in the manors that he’d served in, and carved his name and thoughts into the ice that he found. Rivers melted at his touch and steam-sprites danced in his wake. He was effusive and the will of the land bent under his touch.

She watched him sing, sometimes, and if he sang something she knew passionately enough to rouse some blood in her veins, she would dance for him, and the tumult of their celebrations thickened the whole of the moon’s surface in clouds, and together they created rain.

Apollo kept the memories of the Pale Goddess dancing for his music secret and private dark and deep inside, and his fires richened and deepened with the secret of what sweat looked like on her skin, her gasps when she slowed, colour on her drained cheeks.

She read his mind when he pulled the memories out to think of them, and would glance away with a private little smile. He was beginning to catch eddies from her too, drifting thoughts that did not quite feel like his own, currents and the wax and wane of tides in her blood. He could feel the general undertow of her emotions most days - dark, mournful things that they were. Whenever he tried to cheer her, she found ways of distracting him until he left her alone.

They still didn’t agree about most things. Every day she came to find him, and asked him the same question. 

_ “Are you burning? Don’t you want revenge?” _

Sometimes his answers weren’t the same, but whatever he said, it came back to the men eventually. Men couldn’t love. Were monsters. Inferior. She wouldn’t believe him, would barely listen. When he asked her why she was stubborn, she doused him water until he nearly drowned and begged for her to stop. She didn’t.

Her hand was fisted in his hair, her eyes blazing with the light of the moon, her clenched hand spilling down with burning saltwater that splashed over his face, in his mouth, his throat. He choked and gasped and begged for air, twisting underneath her desperately, but she was unmoveable to his every plea.

“Why?” he managed to spit past his gurgling coughs, and her face twisted with misery. Stop! He thought desperately, choking as his vision blacked at the edges. A hint of betrayal fluttered somewhere, and he relived again that moment running from Kozmotis’ castle with the man’s sweat still on his skin and the shattered belief of love. He always fell the same way. How foolish of him - 

_ Why are you doing this? Why are you hurting me like this? I trusted you! _

The Pale Goddess did not look quite so godly as she wept and said, “That’s what I asked, too.”

She got off him then, and allowed him to breathe, and as he lay there gasping for air she unclasped her dress and showed him the scars, so he did the same for her and at some point the mist between them grew so strong that he felt for her by touch alone, and then she kissed him, and apologised without a word as she left.

He thought about her a lot after that, and when she next came to ask him questions he asked why it mattered whether he needed vengeance or not, and the Pale Goddess smiled. From the darkness of her robe she brought out a collar of ice and metal and snapped it shut around his neck, and another around his mouth, and his wrists, and his ankles. She told him it was lead, and that he would have to get used to wearing it, because he would burn everyone on the mortal plane to a crisp in his current state.

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” he asked. She laughed and shook her head. It was not a kind laugh.

“I want a child,” she said.

Apollo had forgotten what sunlight felt like on his skin. The world was dusty and dry, ice frozen in sheer glossy webs where the Pale Goddess had walked, her skin shimmering in the light like the candles in a shrine. He followed at her heels eagerly, turning his head this way and that to absorb all that he could. 

The sunlight shone through his skin in refractive beams, just like hers. Like hers, his hair was dazzling white, and his eyes shone out of his face like two young stars. He had garbed himself in lead chains and smudges of ash though, while she kept to her dripping water half-frozen in scintillating patches to soft skin. They looked beautiful together, heavy fog banks rolling out in their wake as they strode between the dawn and dusk.

Fire and water. 

She brought him to see places that he’d never known existed, shaggy pine forests that covered whole stretches of the horizon with snowmelt in their needles and the wind howling between them. She pointed out dizzyingly tall mountains so high that Apollo mistook their white tops for the sky itself and then gaped when she laughed and brought him right to the peak. Balancing on cliffs of icy rock and watching it melt under his feet, unlocking a new glacier-cold stream with his heat, he turned to smile at her.

The smile fell when he saw her face, cracking under the strain of sadness as she looked down over the view so familiar to her, the great pines and a wide deep lake in the bowl that the mountains made, the roughshod huts of a little village not far from its shore. The chains he wore clinked together when he walked over to her, but she made no movement to get away, so he gently wrapped her in his arms, and the mists from their bodies covered the view that had upset her so much. The Goddess’ hands dripped water that evaporated off his skin when she returned the hug, and though the sizzling sound was soft, he still strained to hear her voice over it.

“They murdered me here,” she said, “and when I woke up, I could feel the tides and the moon in me, so I swallowed this place in the oceans and drowned them as they drowned me.”

She swallowed and a chill ran deep into the fissure of Apollo’s heart. He stared at her in sudden horror, at the planes of her silvery face, translucent in the sunlight, and he whispered, “What?”

He dropped his arms and backed away, but all he could suddenly see was the smoke that curled  _ through  _ his skin, the footprints that should have appeared in the snow from his passing but that didn’t, the only mark of his presence a sudden heat. “You’re -”  _ Dead? I’m dead? _

She tilted her head and nodded, water sheeting off the ends of her dripping hair. The sunlight gilded her like a glass rose. “The Shadow didn’t eat me,” she said simply, “that is all.” 

She held up her hand and a shield flickered into visibility around them for the first time, round and milky like a great cupola, or a giant pearl, and they were inside. When Apollo looked, he could see flashes of darkness mouthing at the shield, white silvery eyes the same colour as her skin. A prickling feeling of dread sank low into his belly. “That’s-”

_ The Shadow,  _ her thoughts whispered.  _ They usually leave me alone, but they’re attracted to you because you’re… fresher. _

Fresher. He swallowed. Like meat.

“How did I die?” he asked, and she smiled at him softly.

“I gave you quite a surprise by manifesting in front of you, and you were already so weak.”

“I died of fright?!” Above all, Apollo’s instinctive reaction was that was a truly  _ pathetic  _ way to die.

“That and a combination of heat and dehydration.” She tilted her head, droplets of water freezing to the rock when it fell there. “You were buried, at least. I watched my corpse get eaten by fish.”  _ Nibble, nibble,  _ her thoughts said with a mixture of cynical amusement and remembered horror.  _ Do you know how bloated corpses get when they’re left in water? I didn’t even look like me after a while. _

Apollo shivered at the thought, and would have blanched, if there was any colour left in his skin. “So… you’re not even a goddess? You’re just… a ghost?”

The Pale Goddess nodded and scuffed the rock with one bare foot glittering with water droplets. “I was lonely. I found someone who could see me, and they thought - and well, I wanted to keep people safe from what had happened to me-” 

She looked at him and searched his eyes, and he saw desperation there. She wanted him to understand. She wanted him to agree with her and absolve her of the guilt she still carried.

“If you’re not the Pale Goddess, what are you?” he snapped, and she recoiled slightly, looking stung.

“My name was Selena,” she said, very quietly. “I was the daughter of a fisherman. I… liked playing in the reeds by myself. One day I saw some men - something I wasn’t supposed to, and they came to - punish me for eavesdropping - and - afterwards, they were scared that I would tell… So they tied rocks to my hands and feet and they dropped me in the lake, and I tried to swim but it was so heavy, but not heavy enough. The current pulled me right out to sea. It was so cold. So very cold.” After she had said her piece, she closed in on herself, hugging her arms over her stomach, naked but for the patches of frozen water. He could see the faint imprints of the scars they’d left in her skin under the dripping water, and thought maybe he should have known.

“I was a thief,” said Apollo suddenly. “I was caught by Master-” His tongue halted around the words, and shame prickled in him at the automatic naming. Orion hadn’t been his master for a very long time. “I must have been eight. Or something. He found me trying to steal a ring out of his dresser. I was going to give it to a girl I was sweet on at the time.” He smiled softly to remember it. “He put me in the basement, and I didn’t leave that basement until he sold me to a lord as a slave. I think I was - older. I don’t know how old.”

“This is what I wanted my rules to avoid,” she whispered. “What’s the point of being a god when everyone twists your words to their own agenda?” Her face wrinkled hard and she looked on the verge of tears. “I didn’t want to cause so much hate and pain - I just wanted to make sure no man could ever -”

“People shouldn’t get away for their crimes,” said Apollo softly. He thought about the High Priestess and her whip, and his fist clenched, and a hint of his old rage came back to him. “But cleanses, burning them all, destroying everything - that never works.”

“Maybe not,” said Selena, and her mouth quirked into something that was almost a smile, “But revenge feels fairly good.”

“Mas- Orion is dead now,” said Apollo, blankly, and then caught the undertow of her thoughts.

_ That priestess broke her vows and then killed someone for doing the same thing. I hate hypocrites.  _

“Her?” Apollo shook his head. “I - As you said, we were both guilty of the same thing. I don’t… begrudge her that…”

Selena burst into tinkling laughter, like the drop of icicles. “You  _ liar!” _

He looked sidelong at her and felt a frisson of unease. “Why are you encouraging me like this?”

“She was one of my favourites.” She looked aside and a faint hint of silvery-grey dappled her cheeks like a blush. “I’ve… appeared to her before. Once or twice. And I freed her from slavery, and brought her to a new home, and how does she repay me? By rubbing everything that she has and I  _ can’t  _ in my face-!” She clenched her fists and saltwater rippled off her skin and hair, sprayed the snow in pelts. The mist churned around them angrily, and Apollo felt for her thoughts. They were a storm of hurt and rage. 

“-What-” he began to ask, but then abruptly fell silent as the High Priestess’ words echoed in his head.  _ “He is the father of my child.” _

A silence dragged on for a little, and then something impulsive broke in Apollo and he said suddenly, “What better way for me to introduce myself, my Goddess? Do you think they’ll call me the Pale God? I hope not.  _ Fire King  _ sounds better.”

Selena shook her head rapidly. “No, don’t tell them to call you  _ fire king -  _ what sort of name is that??”

Apollo thought it over. “I like it,” he said sulkily, and she laughed with her shimmering eyes and took his hand.

“Let’s burn that place to the ground,” the Pale Goddess said as mist rolled between their fingers, but Apollo smirked softly to himself.

“I have a better idea,” he said, “Trust me.”

* * *

The church tower was very tall and steep, and surrounded by mist and fog. Rain splattered the church roof, painted it wet and glistening. The crack and rumble of thunder in the distance was a low, threatening counterpoint. The Pale Goddess sat in a circle of ice in the centre of the bell tower, surrounded by a pool of molten gold. It had been the bell once, but Apollo had melted it and made it into words instead, every word Kozmotis had ever said in his ear in those private soft moments - countless  _ “you’re beautiful, I love you, I love you”s,  _ all meaningless in the end. Over the roof Selena had chosen to chisel the words of the oath all priestesses took, other choice ones that she said the High Priestess would recognise.

And then they stood there, surrounded by rain and mist and thunder, and waited.

Time was nothing to an immortal, Selena chided him when Apollo grew swiftly impatient. His plan had a delicious fervour about it, but it would take time to execute perfectly. No one had to die. There were things that were worse than death. Guilt and shame could drive a person mad. Apollo knew. He’d been living with it for all his life.

After something like three days of constant mist swarming around the tower, flickering flashes of fire and torrential rain, the High Priestess and the lord of the village finally came up to investigate, and placate whatever needed to be placated. Apollo knew they’d be squirming with fear and guilt. They both had their sins to atone for, they both probably knew the Pale Goddess would be waiting for them here.

Apollo though would be quite the surprise.

He wore his slave collar of lead, the manacles Selena had given him to keep his fire at bay. This wasn’t the time for a demonstration of his rage. Excitement thrummed within him eagerly, anticipation curdled in his stomach. He wanted the peak already - to gloat, undefeated, over the man who had led him to believe that he was safe and gentle and loved but who had dropped him the moment it had been inconvenient, over the spiteful woman who had killed him to protect herself and her lover.

Apollo knew the pattern of Kozmotis’ footsteps better than his own heartbeat, which tripled its speed, a feverish remainder of that time when these meetings meant passion and not hatred and revenge.  _ You killed me, I’ll end you.  _

The scuff on the stairs, pause, he was in front of the Priestess, then, of course he was, noble Kozmotis, protector until the end. The door swung slowly open, and Apollo, half-hidden behind a pillar, felt his breath catch in his throat.

He had barely changed. Still tall, powerful, golden-skinned, hawk-nosed and strong. His hair had more grey in it now, his eyes were tired and dull, but he still had that pride in his spine, that command of himself that had never fully left. Apollo wondered how much time had passed. For the first time, he wondered if Kozmotis would even remember him. Whether he’d found another little gullible slave to fuck.

Either way, Apollo was here to remind him. 

Kozmotis took two steps into the tower, and saw the gold. His jaw dropped and his eyes widened, the colour draining out of his face like sour milk. Oh, he remembered. “What is this?” He hadn’t seen Selena yet. That was to be expected. She said it took a bit of prodding before people noticed her.

The Priestess followed him up, and stood at his side. Loosely, she reached for his hand, and then gasped sharply. She was looking up, at the ice that swirled over the roof. “Kozmotis - you should go - the Goddess-” she began to tremble.

“Archaline?” he asked, and then took hold of her gently, “Archaline, calm down - whatever this is we will face it together -”

“Yes,” said Selena, in barely more than a murmur, “You will.”

Archaline winced as if a fly had landed on her cheek, then she blinked and looked down. Apollo could practically pinpoint the second that she saw Selena, because at that moment she dropped instantly to her knees and pressed her face into the ground.

Kozmotis took a moment longer, but the horror on his face was sweeter. He wasn’t nearly as good at controlling his face as she was.

Selena rose to her feet, the droplets of water smattering both their bowed heads. Ice webbed out from her feet, and the light bent inside her body in shimmering, prismatic angles. She looked like an angel, a goddess, and even in Apollo there rose a sudden worshipful reverence, even knowing the truth of what she was. He would have knelt to her then, but he had his own job to do.

He had an inkling of how she must look, and almost envied them their awe at her splendour nonetheless. 

“I’m very disappointed in both of you,” said Selena. She kept her head bowed, the curtains of wet dripping white hair falling in slants over her brightly glowing eyes, like lamps out of her soft colourless face. “You hurt someone I love deeply.”

His breath caught, and a summery feeling spread through Apollo’s chest. Heating through his entire body, the warmth of his flames completely distracted him from the task at hand.  _ She loves me. She loves me.  _ No one had ever told Apollo that they loved him before while they were still wearing clothes and hadn’t had sex once. Stunned, he held onto the tower wall for support, feeling the heat of his touch steadily burning a sooty mark into the stone.

“My Goddess,” said Archaline, very carefully, “You know that my loyalty has-”

“Been to yourself, Archaline, I’m not stupid,” Selena snapped, and the priestess flinched a little. Apollo could see her cheeks reddening in embarrassment, but she didn’t bother to deny it.

“Goddess,” said Kozmotis, with the heavy sort of manner he adopted whenever he was about to say something particularly insufferable and righteous, “I beg your forgiveness - all I have done was follow my heart, and if it has led me astray, you can be sure that I already understand my mistakes.”

“Is that so?” asked Apollo clearly, his voice cutting through the silence left in the wake of Kozmotis’ oh-so-noble statement.

Both of their heads snapped up, and they paled again, instantly. Archaline looked like she might faint, but it was Kozmotis that Apollo stared at, stared at with hate and rage and fire. For in Kozmotis there was nothing but pure dumb shock.

“Something wrong?” he purred. “Why, you look like you’ve just seen a  _ ghost.” _

_ Don’t tease,  _ Selena snorted softly, but he paid her no attention. Teasing was what Apollo  _ did.  _

“Past mistakes coming back to  _ haunt  _ you? Some unfinished business, maybe?” he drawled, slinking over with steady, measured steps. God, this was petty. But it felt so good. 

Kozmotis’ mouth opened and closed. He said nothing, but when he blinked his golden eyes were shining more than they were supposed to.

_ Apollo, honestly, they aren’t even good puns.  _ Disapproval radiated from Selena constantly. He did his best to ignore her attempts to ruin his fun. Maybe he was deriving an unhealthy amount of pleasure from this, but Apollo rarely ever had the opportunity to be spiteful, he liked to  _ savour  _ it.

“I buried you,” Kozmotis whispered. “You’re dead.”

“Excellent deduction,” Apollo drawled, “Do you want a medal?” He dropped into a crouch and stared coldly into Kozmotis’ eyes. “Ah, sorry, excuse my attitude.  _ Master.”  _ He spat the word. 

Kozmotis flinched again. “You weren’t-” he started to say, but before he could get the words out, Apollo lunged forward and caught his chin in a vicelike grip.

“We both know full well all that I was to you,” he snarled.  _ How did you put it? His fuck-animal?  _ His hold on Kozmotis’ chin was crushing, and smoke curled up between his fingers. Kozmotis shouted in pain and tried to struggle away, the smell of searing flesh thick and sickening between them. Apollo held on, went tighter, so tight that the bone creaked threateningly. 

“Daddy? Mummy?”

The girlish question, mussed by sleep and innocent with confusion, shattered the scene.

Dropping Kozmotis in shock and stepping quickly away, Apollo glanced up and saw her silhouetted in the doorway - a little girl, no more than eight, with long dark hair just like her mother’s, her father’s cheeks, skin the colour of rich wet earth, those gleaming eyes. She wore a faded green nightdress, a little rip just above her bellybutton. He felt instantly a swell of adoration in Selena.  _ Her mother’s daughter. _

“Seraphina, get back inside!” Archaline ordered, panic cracking her voice. 

“Listen to your mother, sweetie,” Kozmotis said hurriedly, keeping his burned face carefully hidden. He was scraping some of the chips of ice off the floor and pressing them to his blistered cheeks, and ordinarily Apollo would have stopped him, watched him suffer, but all he could feel was a sudden, desperate surge of nameless emotion in Selena, and he was held prisoner by the intensity of her longing.

_ I want a child. _

Little Seraphina shook her head, and then her eyes went as round as huge as marbles, and she stared transfixed at the ghosts she had only just noticed. Selena, dripping and magical in the moonlight that was shining through cracks in the clouds, the fractals of her smile enchanting. The little girl stepped closer, awestruck, a silver reflection lighting up feverishly in her eyes. “You’re her, aren’t you?” she whispered. “You’re the Goddess?”

Tears brimmed over and fell swiftly down Selena’s cheeks. She wasn’t a pretty crier, her cheeks and nose flushed over, but the girl reacted as if it had been her own sorrow. 

“Are you okay miss Goddess?” Seraphina asked, taking another step. Then another.

“Seraphina - go back inside! Turn around honey!” Kozmotis shouted, and at the same moment as he did, Apollo saw the danger too. 

“Sera-!” Archaline yelled. Both parents leapt to their feet, but reacting more off of instinct and a wordless order from Selena, Apollo caught one of their arms each and wrestled them back, ignoring their screams of pain as his touch burned them. Forcing them back to their knees, Apollo held them still. They screamed for their daughter, but Seraphina didn’t even appear to hear them over the wind that roared and chased around the tower.

Seraphina took another step closer. 

Selena was tense and still, barely moving but for her rapid breathing. Archaline was begging directly to her, pleading for her to be merciful, Seraphina was an innocent, punish them - punish her,  _ please,  _ but Selena either didn’t hear her or didn’t care. The saltwater she had drowned in ran off her in sluicing waves, making the entire floor slippery and damp. Her eyes glowed madly, moonbright. Seraphina’s hair was whipping around her in the wind, tugging at her skirt. She had her hands extended towards the ghost, but whatever she was saying went unheard.

Another step. They were close enough to touch now. Apollo could feel Kozmotis roar with urgency, had to wrap an arm around both of their waists and yank with all of his might to stop them from breaking out of his hold. He was far stronger than both of them, but Archaline was as slippery as a greased snake and Kozmotis about as pliable as a maddened bear, and together they made a formidable attempt at breaking free. Not that he blamed them. 

There was a long silence. Selena’s hand twitched, and for a moment Apollo caught a thought from her - it would be so easy to snap the little girl’s neck. Take her for their own. Free her.

“Think about what you’re doing,” he urged her, and she looked up at him with something tortured in her eyes. A vast, silent struggle seemed to overwhelm her. 

A fraught silence fell deep and swift. Archaline was crying. “Please,” she whispered, in a broken litany - “not this.”

Selena’s hands fell sharply on the girl’s shoulders and Kozmotis made an animal nose of pain in his throat. But she did not twist, or snap, or hurt, instead, she smiled kindly, with great effort, and gently turned her around and pushed her back towards her parents. 

Seraphina stumbled a little on the slippery ice, and Kozmotis’ voice cracked with relief as he called out to her. At once, she seemed to hear him, for her gap-toothed smile stretched wide and she straightened to look at him, impulsively springing forward to run to him. In an instant, his voice turned to horror as her foot landed awkwardly on the ice. 

It seemed as if the world slowed to a stop as Seraphina skidded, her joy turning to panic, and a particularly rough blast of wind hit her full force. It was the final straw. Selena lunged to catch her but was too slow, and Apollo lost his grip on Kozmotis and Archaline as he instinctively reached - despite knowing the distance. 

Wobbling on the edge of the tower, Seraphina barely had time to open her mouth for a scream before the wind took her, and she fell. 

_ “SERAPHINA!”  _

The world blinked around them and then Selena hurtled off the edge after her, her gleaming form straight like an arrow. Without know how he did it, Apollo grasped both of the humans and vanished - vanished like Selena did when she moved around the world, reappearing half a second later at the bottom of the tower, where absurdly, sunlight still reigned warm and summery, and a crowd of people already had gathered.

A crumpled little body was splayed over the springy green grass, wind-ripped hair strewn about her young face. The inhuman scream that ripped out of Archaline could have shredded glass, and the High Priestess fell to her knees, the sound drawing attention from people nearby. Kozmotis stood where Apollo had dropped him, held utterly still by shock.

Selena flickered into view beside the dead girl, frantically trying to shake her back into wakefulness, to rouse her. Out of the corner of his eye, Apollo saw the Shadow blacken the tower-top, creeping sneakily down the bricks. Urgently, he ran towards them. They didn’t have time!

_ Get her out! The Shadow is here! _

Selena must have heard him, because though her face crumpled in misery she pulled at something, and a silvery shimmer settled over the girl, and in an instant, Seraphina sat up, only she left her body behind.

Her hair was forever-whipping in an unseen wind, and but her skin and eyes glowed as brightly as Selena’s, although green-tinted by the grass. Seraphina blinked, a little confused, and asked sweetly, innocently, with a hint of a lisp, “What happened?”

Selena, crouched in front of her, only sobbed. “I’m sorry,” she gasped - “I didn’t-” She hadn’t wanted this. Not like this.

“Nothing,” Apollo lied quickly, desperately. Someone had to. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be all right now.” He took one of Seraphina’s tiny little hands and pulled her to her feet, and then away from the crumpled, twisted thing that had been her body. She didn’t need to see that. 

A breeze whispered around Seraphina even as she walked towards him - he could feel it buffeting against his fire. “Are mummy and daddy okay?” she asked, and Apollo had no words - no, no they were not  _ okay,  _ they had just seen their daughter  _ die. _

Neither of them had planned for this. They’d both, wordlessly, believed that Archaline would have terminated or got rid of the child. They’d both known that it was not the child’s fault - wouldn’t have targeted her at all.

Looking at them now, Apollo felt hysterical laughter bubble up in the back of his throat. 

_ There were worse things than death. Guilt can drive you mad -  _ and it had been Kozmotis’ shout that had distracted his daughter into falling.

It couldn’t have been a more gruesome and bitter revenge even if he’d planned it himself.


End file.
